Country Club of the Poconos, East Stroudsburg, PA

Played here Sept. 24, 2013. Beautiful course, albeit entails driving between homes. Fairways well-maintained. Challenging course, lots of slopes. Greens are good. Played Courses' Special Tuesday Golf for $25.

I am a higher handicap player so this course was on the harder side for me. I lost plenty of balls but at least it was into the woods. There are only a few holes that are actually lines by houses so I liked that a lot. The fairways were well groomed and the greens were all in pretty good condition. There are many elevation changes as you may be hitting from low up a hill and some spectacular holes where you hit from an elevated tee box. I enjoyed it for sure and will be playing there again without a doubt. I personally enjoyed the scenic drive from one hole to another and did not mind that some of it was through the local neighborhood. The staff was friendly as well.

Played Sept 2012: One of the strangest layouts I have played in 50 years of golf! All the holes, fairways and greens are laid out along the slopes rather that up or down. After a while, I figured out that you need to play every shot into the rough on the high side so that it will bounce down and maybe catch the fairway as it runs down the mountain. The distances from green to tee are extraordinarily long and you follow painted areas through a lot of housing developments to get to each hole. Maintenance was maybe a 5 of 10 with several maintenance trouble spots to be encountered along the way. Very nice clubhouse with disinterested personnel at the counter. Even after using the Tee-time book, I found the course to be overpriced. The course must have been designed by a PENNDOT engineer potholes and all!

This course doesn't know what it wants to be. I don't like the way it winds thru the housing development. Some of the holes are odd. The club house is very nice.